Hex Five Announces MultiZone Security for Arm Cortex-M Series Processors

A quick and safe way to add security and separation to billions of embedded devices

Redwood City, California, Feb. 24, 2020 — Hex Five Security announces the general availability of MultiZone® Security for members of the Arm® Cortex®‑M processor family: a quick and safe way to add security and separation to Cortex‑M devices. MultiZone is immediately available for Cortex‑M0+, Cortex‑M3, Cortex‑M4, and Cortex‑M7, including microcontrollers produced by Microchip, NXP® Semiconductors, Renesas, STMicroelectronics, GigaDevice, and others.

“Achieving truly robust security for a world of a trillion connected devices requires an ecosystem of partners who recognize security needs to be built-in from the ground up,” said Tim Whitfield, VP Strategy, Automotive and IoT Line of Business at Arm. “By collaborating with Hex Five, we are enabling our customers with more choices for foundational security across a broad range of Arm-based platforms.”

Cortex-M processors are widely used in general purpose microcontrollers and are often embedded in System on Chip (SoC) devices that collectively ship in billions of units annually. As the security landscape evolves, security requirements are becoming more complex, attack surfaces are larger and there is an increased need for more robust data protection. In response, Hex Five has created a software only solution in MultiZone, providing security without the need to add extra hardware or redesign the SoC, and eliminating the complexity associated with managing a hybrid hardware/software security scheme.

“The design complexity associated with traditional hardware isolation mechanisms often results in them not being used at all” said Cesare Garlati, CEO and Founder of Hex Five Security, Inc. “To minimize human error, attack surface, and risk of system vulnerability, MultiZone encapsulates and hides the complexity of managing the underlying hardware security blocks. The only interaction between the developer and the trusted execution environment is a simple policy definition file. No coding, compilation, linking, and debugging required – or in fact even allowed.”

For Cortex‑M series-based applications that need to shield critical functionality from untrusted third-party components, MultiZone provides hardware-enforced, software-defined separation of multiple trusted execution environments. Unlike traditional solutions, MultiZone is self-contained, presents an extremely small attack surface, and it is policy-driven – meaning that it doesn’t require hardware or software redesign. MultiZone enables the freedom to innovate with multi‑sourced components like open source software, third-party libraries, and legacy binaries that can be configured in minutes to achieve an unprecedented level of safety and security.

As part of the collaboration with Arm, Hex Five will look to achieve PSA Certified status for MultiZone Security through independent security testing.

MultiZone will be unveiled to the general public at the Embedded World Conference, February 25-27, 2020 in Nuremberg, Germany. Register for the workshop 5.1 on Tuesday 25 at 14:30 or for sessions 3.2 II on Wednesday 26 at 17:00 and 3.3 II on Thursday 27 at 14:30.

Supporting Quotes

“Providing a multi-zone security development ecosystem for microcontrollers is a challenge as the end application developers require a compact, secure and simple solution,” said Rod Drake, vice president of Microchip’s MCU32 and MPU32 business units. “Hex Five Security has addressed these challenges effectively and we are happy to be part of their demonstration with our high-performance 32-bit SAME70 MCU at Embedded World.”

“The introduction of MultiZone Security from Hex Five greatly simplifies the integration of complex security software into robust and scalable architectures,” said Robert Oshana, Vice President Software Engineering Research and Development at NXP. “By leveraging the underlying system hardware in conjunction with their optimized software, Hex Five MultiZone provides an open and secure platform to address the security requirements for future products.”

“We are excited to support Hex Five’s innovative approach to IoT security on the Renesas RA MCUs,” said Kaushal Vora, Director of Strategic Partnerships & Global Ecosystem at Renesas Electronics Corporation. “Hex Five’s MultiZone software isolation solution allows our customers to seamlessly and easily enable separation as part of their security implementation on constrained IoT devices. This solution is a strong addition to Renesas’ ready to use RA partner building block solutions.”

“Supported by all the STM32Trust-aware MCU platforms from STMicroelectronics, Hex Five’s MultiZone Security complements the ST offer with its policy-based hardware-enforced separation for an unlimited number of security domains,” said Christophe Mani, Ecosystem Security Marketing Manager at STMicroelectronics. “With its SDK, the Hex Five solution brings an innovative way to allow STM32 developers to better control their data, code and peripherals to target ever evolving security challenges in the IoT.”

“We are pleased to partner with Hex Five and we appreciate Hex Five’s MultiZone innovative and elegant approach to software-defined security.” said Eric Jin, Product Marketing Director at GigaDevice. “Through this partnership with Hex Five, MultiZone enables GigaDevice MCU users who require enhanced security to effortlessly add hardware-grade security to the GD32 ARM Cortex-M based devices without additional hardware.”

About Hex Five Security, Inc.

Hex Five Security is the creator of MultiZone Security. MultiZone open standard technology provides hardware-enforced, software-defined separation for multiple application domains, with full control over data, programs, and I/O. Unlike traditional solutions, MultiZone is self-contained, presents an extremely small attack surface, and requires no hardware or software redesign. Open source software, third-party binaries, and legacy code can be configured in minutes to achieve unprecedented levels of safety and security. For more information visit http://www.hex-five.com

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